You’re looking at an ad for what may have been the world’s first multiplayer graphical online gaming service, Games Computers Play (1985). It may also have been the world’s first graphical multi-user environment, as it predated the Lucasfilm Habitat beta test for the C64 (1986) by six months or more.

I don’t know else much about this Atari 8-bit-only service beside what can be gleaned from the advertisement above, a 1985 article in Antic magazine, and this thread over at AtariAge.

One of the posters in the forum thread linked above mentioned that he/she found the creators of the service, whom I’d love to talk to myself. I’m trying to get in touch with that poster, but if anyone knows anything about this service (including info about who created it) or has stories to share, please email me here.

[Update – I did get in touch with one of the creators of this service. More info to follow. ]

[ From Computer Gaming World, November-December 1985, p.20 ]

Discussion Topic of the Week: What was the first game you played with another human (or humans) over a modem?

I played a number of BBS games via modem. Tradewars (the version before 2002), the Pit, Solar Realms Elite … it’s hard to know where I started.

The first person-to-person game via modem was probably either a tank simulator (I believe cleverly named “Tank”) or 688 Attack Sub. A number of simulators at that time had attempts at multiplayer via modem, so I can’t say for sure.

Playing Doom over modem is nothing for lag, though. Telnetting via modem to *run* Quake remotely but display it on the local machine … that’s lag! 🙂 Pointless, really, but I did that once.

The original NASCAR Racing by Papyrus, on their prototype dial-in multiplayer service called Hawaii. I think this was in…1994 or 5. I clearly remember the several hundreds dollars in long distance charges from dialing into the servers in Boston!

The first game I definitely recall playing was my friend’s BBS copy of Legend of the Red Dragon (though only one could play at a time) in 93/94. Otherwise, it would have been the Ultima Dragons’ MOO at Weyrmount in early 1996 — though as I recall, there wasn’t a game quite as much as a really detailed world to wander around while chatting.